“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” - George W. Bush

Saturday, July 08, 2017

Why Poland is Great , Germany is Not and Russia is important to help the US save Western Civilization

HAT TIP : DOUG

Patching It Up With Putin

By Patrick J. Buchanan

President Donald Trump flew off for his first meeting with Vladimir Putin — with instructions from our foreign policy elite that he get into the Russian president’s face over his hacking in the election of 2016.

Hopefully, Trump will ignore these people. For their record of failure is among the reasons Americans elected him to office.

What president, seeking to repair damaged relations with a rival superpower, would begin by reading from an indictment?

President Eisenhower did not begin his summit with Nikita Khrushchev by berating him for crushing the Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956 — a more grievous crime then hacking the emails of John Podesta.

President Kennedy did not let Russia’s emplacement of missiles in Cuba in 1962 prevent him from offering an olive branch to Moscow in his widely praised

President Nixon, in first meeting Leonid Brezhnev, did not denounce him for extinguishing the Prague Spring. Were Trump to start his first summit with Putin by dressing him down, why meet with him at all?

Trump would do better to explore where we can work together, as in ending Syria’s civil war and averting a new war in Korea.

Moreover, when it comes to interference in the internal politics of other nations to bring about “regime change,” understandably, Putin might see himself as more sinned against than sinning.

Should Trump bring up the email hacking in 2016, Putin could ask him to explain U.S. support for the violent coup d’etat that overthrew a democratically elected pro-Russian government in Ukraine, a land with which Russia has been intimately associated for 1,000 years.

Consider the behavior of post-Cold War America, after Moscow gave up its empire, pulled all its troops out of Europe, let the USSR dissolve into 15 nations and held out a hand in friendship.

We gathered all the Warsaw Pact nations and three former Russian Federation republics into a NATO alliance targeted at Russia. We put troops, ships and bases into the Baltic on the doorstep of St. Petersburg. We bombed Russia’s old ally Serbia for 78 days, forcing it to surrender its birth province of Kosovo.

Among the failings of America’s post-Cold War foreign policy elites are hubris, arrogance and an utter absence of that greatest of gifts that the gods can give us — “to see ourselves as others see us.”

Can we not see why the Russian people, who saw us as friends in the 1990s, no longer do so, and why Putin, a Russia-First nationalist, has an 80 percent approval rating on the issue of standing up for his country?

Looking about the world today, do we really need any more crises or quarrels? Do we not have enough on our plate? As the Buddhist saying goes, “Do not dwell in the past … concentrate the mind on the present moment.”

Americans are rightly angry that Russia hacked the presidential election of 2016. But what was done cannot be undone. And Putin is not going to return Crimea to Kiev, the annexation of which was the most popular action of his long tenure as Russian president.

As D.C.’s immortal Mayor Marion Barry once said to constituents appalled by his latest episode of social misconduct: “Get over it!”

We have other fish to fry.

In Syria and Iraq, where the ISIS caliphate is in its death rattle, Russia and the U.S. both have a vital interest in avoiding any military collision, and in ending the war. This probably means the U.S. demand that Syrian President Assad be removed will have to be shelved.

Consider China. Asked by Trump to squeeze Pyongyang on its nuclear missile program, China increased trade with North Korea 37 percent in the first quarter. The Chinese are now telling us to stop sailing warships within 13 miles of its militarized islets and reefs in a South China Sea that they claim belongs to them, and demanding that we cancel our $1.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan.

Hong Kong’s 7 million people have been told their democratic rights, secured in Great Britain’s transfer of the island to China, are no longer guaranteed.

Now China is telling us to capitulate to North Korea’s demand for an end to U.S. military maneuvers with South Korea and to remove the THAAD missile system the U.S. has emplaced. And Beijing is imposing sanctions on South Korea for accepting the U.S. missile system.

Meanwhile, the dispute with North Korea is going critical.

If Kim Jong Un is as determined as he appears to be to build an ICBM with a nuclear warhead that can hit Seattle or San Francisco, we will soon be down to either accepting this or exercising a military option that could bring nuclear war.

Trump cannot allow this Beltway obsession with Putin to prevent us from closing, if we can, this breach. If we do not bring Russia back into the West, where do we think she will go?

29 comments:

I could not be more proud of an American President than I am of Trump.

Salute to all you deplorable.

To the Obama and Clinton supporters:

9/11, moral relativism and appeasement “Like most others, I had not seen 9/11 coming. Yet two days earlier, in a column about the decline of Christianity in Britain, I wrote, ‘Liberal values will be protected only if Christianity holds the line as our dominant culture. A society which professes neutrality between cultures would create a void which Islam, with its militant political creed, would attempt to fill’

…For immediately after the Twin Towers collapsed, I realised that what the West was facing was different from ordinary terrorism; and different again from war by one state on another. This was something more akin to a cancer in the global bloodstream which had to be fought with all the weapons, both military and cultural, at our disposal. And yet in that moment I also realised that the West would flinch from this fight, because it no longer recognised the difference between good and evil or the validity of preferring some cultures to others, but had decided instead that all such concepts were relative. And so it would most likely take the path of appeasement rather than the measures needed to defend itself from the attempt to destroy it. And so it has proved.

”Through demonising its enemies…the left has…all but destroyed rational discourse."

1. The “Chicago Way” (in London) “I always believed in the duty of a journalist to uphold truth over lies, follow the evidence where it led and fight abuses of power wherever they were to be found. I gradually realised, however, that the left was not on the side of truth, reason, and justice, but instead promoted ideology, malice, and oppression. Rather than fighting the abuse of power, it embodied it.

Through demonising its enemies in this way, the left has undermined the possibility of finding common ground and all but destroyed rational discourse. This is because, as shown by its reaction to Lady Thatcher’s death, it substitutes insult and abuse for argument and reasoned disagreement.”

In his magnificent speech in Poland, President Trump asked whether the west “still has the will to survive”.

If he’d listened to BBC Radio’s Today programme this morning (approx 0840), he might have lost his own.

The issue that seemed to have startled the BBC was the suggestion that there were now threats to western bonds of culture, faith and tradition. (The fact that some of us have been writing about this for years has of course totally passed the BBC by). Two guests were invited to discuss this question: Margaret MacMillan, professor of international history at Oxford university where she is also Warden of St Anthony’s college, and Lord Dannatt, former Chief of the General Staff.

The interviewer’s loaded question about Trump’s speech, “Is he in any sense right?” invited them to agree that no, there could be no sense in which he was. Both duly agreed. Three against Trump, then. But if anything illustrated precisely what he was talking about, this conversation could scarcely have been bettered.

Opined Professor MacMillan: “There are bonds that hold us together and there are often bonds of history, but the idea there is something called ‘the west’ seems to me very dubious indeed. There are many wests, there are many different ways of looking at who we are, and I’m worried by the whole tenor of his speech. The talk of the ‘will’, the family, traditional values, what does that all mean?”

Lord Dannatt was equally perplexed. “What threat does he have in mind? From Russia? Islamic State? From climate change? Well he ruled that one out by pulling out of the Paris agreement. Or is it the nuclear threat from North Korea?”

Helpfully, the interviewer observed that what Trump had meant was a waning of cultural self confidence; he further ventured to suggest, with appropriate BBC diffidence, that “the project that we’ve all been involved in for centuries is a decent one”.

Professor MacMillan agreed there was a “decent side to what the west has done”. But just in case anyone might have thought she believed it to be better than other societies, she added there were many sides that weren’t decent at all “when you think of some of the things we’ve unleashed on the world” (presumably as opposed to the unlimited decencies that countries which don’t subscribe to respect for human life, freedom and democracy have bequeathed to humanity).

She conceded that the west had built a “liberal intentional order since the first and second world wars”. She agreed that respect for the rule of law and democratic institutions were very important and that these should be defended. “But if you talk about defending the power of the west and the dominance of the west that’s very different and I’m not sure that does make the world more stable… What worries me is that part of the enemy is seen as those who live among us… Islam, or Islamic fundamentalism, is [as presented by Trump] in some way a threat, and that means not just from outside but inside and that to me is really troubling”,

This professor of history, who teaches the young and thus transmits the culture down through the generations, didn’t even seem to know what that culture was. She implied that the will to survive was something out of Nietzsche or fascist ideology rather than the impulse to defend a society and a civilisation. She seemed to find incomprehensible the very idea that certain values defined western civilisation at all, or that it had a coherent identity.

She found something frightening or sinister about traditional values or the emphasis on the family: the very things that keep any society together. The one good thing she conceded was associated with the west – the “liberal international order” – had developed only after the two world wars. So much for the 18th century western Enlightenment, the development of political liberty and the rise of science.

The idea of the west having power filled her with horror; but without power the west can’t defend itself. And she thought the idea the west was threatened from within as well as from without was “troubling”. In other words, she doesn’t believe home-grown radicalised Islamists pose a threat to western countries. Now that really is troubling.

As for Lord Dannatt complaining Trump wasn’t specific about the threats he had in mind – well, talk about missing the point! Russia, Isis and North Korea are all threats to the west. The question was whether the west actually wanted to defeat any or all of these and more.

And Lord Dannatt’s reference to climate change was unintentionally revealing – about himself. Climate change supposedly threatens the survival of the planet. No-one suggests it poses a threat to the west alone! So it was irrelevant to the issue under discussion. Its inclusion implies that Lord Dannatt knows one thing: that Trump is wrong about EVERYTHING. So he just threw in climate change for good measure to show how wrong about everything Trump is.

So what exactly did Trump say to produce such finger-wagging disdain? Well, he produced an astonishing, passionate and moving declaration of belief in the west, its values of freedom and sovereignty and his determination to defend them.

He summoned up Poland’s resistance against two terrible tyrannies, Nazism and the Soviet Union, to make a broader point about western civilisation. Most strikingly, he identified Christianity as the core of that civilisation, that it was Christianity that was crucial in Poland’s stand against Soviet oppression – and that, in an echo of Pope Benedict’s warning years ago, the west has to reaffirm its Christian values in order to survive.

“And when the day came on June 2nd, 1979, and one million Poles gathered around Victory Square for their very first mass with their Polish Pope, that day, every communist in Warsaw must have known that their oppressive system would soon come crashing down. They must have known it at the exact moment during Pope John Paul II’s sermon when a million Polish men, women, and children suddenly raised their voices in a single prayer. A million Polish people did not ask for wealth. They did not ask for privilege. Instead, one million Poles sang three simple words: ‘We Want God.’“In those words, the Polish people recalled the promise of a better future. They found new courage to face down their oppressors, and they found the words to declare that Poland would be Poland once again.“As I stand here today before this incredible crowd, this faithful nation, we can still hear those voices that echo through history. Their message is as true today as ever. The people of Poland, the people of America, and the people of Europe still cry out “We want God.”“Together, with Pope John Paul II, the Poles reasserted their identity as a nation devoted to God. And with that powerful declaration of who you are, you came to understand what to do and how to live. You stood in solidarity against oppression, against a lawless secret police, against a cruel and wicked system that impoverished your cities and your souls. And you won.”“Our adversaries, however, are doomed because we will never forget who we are. And if we don’t forget who are, we just can’t be beaten. Americans will never forget. The nations of Europe will never forget. We are the fastest and the greatest community. There is nothing like our community of nations. The world has never known anything like our community of nations.”“We write symphonies. We pursue innovation. We celebrate our ancient heroes, embrace our timeless traditions and customs, and always seek to explore and discover brand-new frontiers.“We reward brilliance. We strive for excellence, and cherish inspiring works of art that honor God. We treasure the rule of law and protect the right to free speech and free expression.“We empower women as pillars of our society and of our success. We put faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, at the center of our lives. And we debate everything. We challenge everything. We seek to know everything so that we can better know ourselves.“And above all, we value the dignity of every human life, protect the rights of every person, and share the hope of every soul to live in freedom. That is who we are. Those are the priceless ties that bind us together as nations, as allies, and as a civilization.“What we have, what we inherited from our — and you know this better than anybody, and you see it today with this incredible group of people — what we’ve inherited from our ancestors has never existed to this extent before. And if we fail to preserve it, it will never, ever exist again. So we cannot fail.”

“We have to remember that our defense is not just a commitment of money, it is a commitment of will. Because as the Polish experience reminds us, the defense of the West ultimately rests not only on means but also on the will of its people to prevail and be successful and get what you have to have. The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?“We can have the largest economies and the most lethal weapons anywhere on Earth, but if we do not have strong families and strong values, then we will be weak and we will not survive”.

The millions who voted for Trump did so because of the promise he made them that he would defend America and the western values of life and liberty that it embodies. They understand very well that America and the west are not just being threatened from outside but are being undermined from within by the kind of people who are engaged in a fight to the death to destroy him – and by the kind of people who took part in that discussion on Today.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord, He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored,He hath loosed the fateful lightningof His terrible swift sword,His truth is marching on

I have seen Him in the watch firesof a hundred circling camps,They have builded Him an altarin the evening dews and damps, I can read his righteous sentencein the dim and flaring lamps,His day is marching on

I have read a fiery Gospelwrit in burnished rows of steel,"As ye deal with My contemnersso with you My grace shall deal,"Let the Hero born of womancrush the serpent with His heel,Since God is marching on

He has sounded forth the trumpetthat shall never call retreat,He is sifting out the hearts of menbefore His judgment seat,Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him!Be jubilant, my feet,Our God is marching on

He is coming like the gloryof the morning on the wave,He is wisdom to the mightyHe is honor to the brave,So the world shall be His footstooland the soul of wrong His slave,Our God is marching on Glory! Glory ! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah Glory! Glory ! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on

Two weeks after Donald J. Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination last year, his eldest son arranged a meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan with a Russian lawyer who has connections to the Kremlin, according to confidential government records described to The New York Times.

The previously undisclosed meeting was also attended by Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman at the time, Paul J. Manafort, as well as the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, according to interviews and the documents, which were outlined by people familiar with them.

While President Trump has been dogged by revelations of undisclosed meetings between his associates and Russians, this episode at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, is the first confirmed private meeting between a Russian national and members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle during the campaign. It is also the first time that his son Donald J. Trump Jr. is known to have been involved in such a meeting.

Representatives of Donald J. Trump Jr. and Mr. Kushner confirmed the meeting after The Times approached them with information about it. In a statement, Donald Jr described the meeting as primarily about an adoption program. The statement did not address whether the presidential campaign was discussed.

Trump Foot Soldier Sidelined Under Glare of Russia Inquiry JULY 2, 2017American intelligence agencies have concluded that Russian hackers and propagandists worked to tip the election toward Mr. Trump, and a special prosecutor and congressional committees are now investigating whether his campaign associates colluded with Russians. Mr. Trump has disputed that, but the investigation has cast a shadow over his administration for months.

Mr. Trump has also equivocated on whether the Russians were solely responsible for the hacking. But in Germany on Friday, meeting President Vladimir V. Putin for the first time as president, Mr. Trump questioned him about the hacking. The Russian leader denied meddling in the election.

The Russian lawyer invited to the Trump Tower meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya, is best known for mounting a multipronged attack against the Magnitsky Act, an American law that blacklists suspected Russian human rights abusers. The law so enraged Mr. Putin that he retaliated by halting American adoptions of Russian children.

It’s a false ideology, a burden and a cancer on our body politic. It defies reality. Before I address the text of Donald Trump’s speech yesterday in Poland, it’s worth pulling up two quotes from our two previous presidents. These quotes, I think, encapsulate the difference between the ideas Trump articulated yesterday and the core ideas of many of his liberal critics.

First, let’s go with Barack Obama, in a speech to the British Parliament on May 25, 2011:

For both of our nations, living up to the ideals enshrined in [our] founding documents has always been a work in progress. The path has never been perfect.

But through the struggles of slaves and immigrants, women and ethnic minorities, former colonies and persecuted religions, we have learned better than most that the longing for freedom and human dignity is not English or American or Western — it is universal, and it beats in every heart.

Next, let’s step into the wayback machine to George W. Bush’s first State of the Union address following the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom:

We also hear doubts that democracy is a realistic goal for the greater Middle East, where freedom is rare. Yet it is mistaken and condescending to assume that whole cultures and great religions are incompatible with liberty and self-government.

I believe that God has planted in every human heart the desire to live in freedom. And even when that desire is crushed by tyranny for decades, it will rise again.

These statements are remarkably similar, perfectly encapsulate a universalist view of human nature and human freedom, and are totally and completely wrong.

Our previous presidents — and, indeed, much of the intellectual establishment left and right — have sold the American people a false bill of goods about human nature, their own history, and the role of culture in the inculcation of our civilizational values.

Iraqi forces have already begun celebrating the liberation of Mosul on the banks of the Tigris, as the last lines of defense for ISIS have begun to collapse. Reuters reports that Iraqi television claims that the final declaration of victory over the terrorist group in Mosul will come in just hours. If so, it comes after nearly three years of darkness for Mosul and the Nineveh province:

Iraqi security forces expect to take full control of Mosul within hours as Islamic State’s defensive lines crumble in its former de facto capital in Iraq, military commanders said on Saturday.

Dozens of soldiers celebrated amid the rubble on the banks of the Tigris river without waiting for a formal victory declaration, some dancing to music blaring out from a truck and firing machineguns into the air, a Reuters correspondent said. …

A military spokesman cited by the TV said the insurgents’ defense lines were collapsing. Iraqi commanders say the militants were fighting for every meter with snipers, grenades and suicide bombers, forcing security forces to fight house-to-house in the densely populated maze of narrow alleyways.

How desperate have ISIS fighters become? Some tried to swim away in the Tigris, while others did what was once unthinkable.

“The battle has reached the phase of chasing the insurgents in remaining blocks,” the Iraqi military media office said in a statement. “Some members of Daesh have surrendered,” it added, using an Arab acronym of Islamic State.ISIS morale may have finally been broken by the failure of a last-ditch effort to beat back the Iraqi military. A counter-attack launched yesterday fizzled out within hours:.....

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) has decided to take “the gloves off” to encourage others to see President Trump's the way she does, the House Democrat said in a New York Times profile published on Friday.

“Trump was just so outrageous, so disrespectful, such a bully and dangerous for this country, I decided, ‘You know what? I’m taking the gloves off and I’m going to step out,’” Waters told the Times, explaining her bombastic rhetoric toward the president. She has called for his impeachment.

“I was going to not only challenge him but encourage others to see him for what he is: basically a bully, an egotistical maniac, a liar and someone who did not need to be president,” she continued.

Waters has proven to be one of the most vocal critics of Trump during his presidency, and has called for his impeachment.

“We don’t have to be afraid to use the word impeachment,” Waters said in May, adding: “All we have to do is make sure we are talking to the American public, we are keeping them involved, we are challenging every day, we are resisting every day.”

The congresswoman slammed Trump on Friday during an MSNBC interview, after his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin saying “America is getting played” by of the leaders.

While Justin Trudeau descends ever further into folly — “Pride Mubarak” and what it implies might get him a prison term in a dozen Muslim countries — Premier Couillard of Quebec gives tentative signs of coming to his senses (although the final returns are not yet in).

From a recent news item in the Globe and Mail:

Quebec’s Premier has sent “a shock wave” through his province’s Muslim communities after he linked the lone-wolf attacker who stabbed a Michigan police officer to the wider Islamic religion.

Philippe Couillard, long seen as an ally in Quebec’s mainstream Muslim communities, has for years taken pains to avoid linking the broader Islamic faith to terrorist attacks, including those perpetrated by Quebeckers on Canadian soil. The Premier’s political opponents have often accused him of being soft on Islamist terrorism.

On Thursday, one day after a Quebec man was accused of wounding a police officer while shouting the Islamic phase “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) in an airport in Flint, Mich., Mr. Couillard dramatically shifted approach.

A reporter pointed out terrorist attacks have often triggered a spike in assault, vandalism and name-calling against Muslims in Quebec and asked the Premier if he had a message to Quebeckers.

Note how expectant and eager the reporter was that the “message” the Premier would offer “to Quebeckers” would not be an attempt to reassure the Infidel targets of Muslim terrorists that security concerns were paramount and Muslim terrorism would be stamped out. Instead, the reporter expected Couillard to offer a reassurance to Muslims themselves. How disappointed he must have been when Prime Minister Couillard, in the past considered to be among the best friends of Quebec’s Muslims, did not speak according to plan.

This is what Premier Couillard replied:

“You cannot disconnect this type of event, terrorism, from Islam in general,” Mr. Couillard said. “I think President [Emmanuel] Macron yesterday was very eloquent about this when addressing the Muslim community in France. He told them it’s also your responsibility to act on the theological front to explain to your people that this is not part of the religion, that it’s contrary to the teachings of the religion.”

It’s hard to know what Couillard — or Macron — really think. Does Couillard believe that “this” — meaning terrorism by Muslims — is not “part of the religion” of Islam, or does he know perfectly well that it is not just part of it, but a central weapon in the worldwide Jihad against the Infidels? And if he does, is he simply trying to put Muslim leaders in a bind, by telling them they must “explain to your people” (a telling phrase, signifying a recognition that Muslims are not “our people,” they are not fully integrated, they remain a people apart, not because the Quebecois shun them, but because they refuse integration themselves) that this “is not part of the religion, that it’s contrary to the teachings of the religion”? But how can Muslim leaders really be expected to tell their “own people,” as Couillard and Macron insist is their responsibility, what for them is an obvious untruth? It’s one thing to mislead Infidels with such falsehoods, but quite another for Muslim leaders to tell “their own people” such things. Muslims know perfectly well what the texts and teachings, of Islam contain. That is, they know that violence and terrorism are “part of the [Islamic] religion,” and are not “contrary to the teachings of the religion.”

Can it be that Couillard and Macron really believe that terrorism “is not part of the [Islamic] religion, that it’s contrary to the teachings of the religion”? Or do they mean something like “you’d better start teaching that terrorism is contrary to the teachings of your religion — Islam — whatever you really think, because otherwise even we will abandon you. But how you do it is your own business.”?

Perhaps the defection of Premier Couillard will be taken as a warning by Muslims that, unlike Prime Minister Trudeau, not all politicians in Canada are limitlessly gullible. Even those who were friendliest to them, who could be counted on always to defend them, like Couillard, are getting fed up. Almost every day brings fresh news of some Muslim atrocity somewhere in the world. Just in the last few weeks, there have been attacks in London, Manchester, London again, Paris (twice), Brussels, the Philippines, Israel, India, Kenya, and Michigan, the attack that apparently was the last straw for M. Couillard.

The Muslim leaders know, and so do “their people,” that terrorism is part of their religion. Are some of them, the so-called “moderates,” disturbed enough by the defection of M. Couilllard to realize that they have somehow to dampen the appeal of that terrorism? For years they have been playing a game of let’s-pretend about Islam, claiming that the calls in the Qur’an for terrorism and other Jihad verses preaching violence must be “contextualized.” That’s a game played to mislead credulous Infidels. Some of those “moderates,” realizing they are losing support among those who, like Premier Couillard, they once could count on, should perhaps now try not to persuade not Infidels but, rather, fellow Muslims, to believe in the “contextualization” of the Jihad verses, including those that specifically mention terror, in the Qur’an.

Reeling from the seeming defection of M. Couillard, some Muslim leaders might be ready for such a volte-face. For Couillard’s defection from the camp of defenders of the faith was truly disturbing:

Samer Majzoub, president of the Montreal-based Canadian Muslim Forum, said the Premier’s words “have honestly caused a shock wave.”

Usually, Mr. Couillard is a very understanding person. Putting the responsibility of one man’s actions on an entire community … we didn’t expect that from a person who we truly believe is open-minded and who has backed us up in the past.”

Shaheen Ashraf, a Quebec board member of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, said she “is very disappointed” in the Premier for putting the onus on her community.

“You don’t think we try?” Ms. Ashraf said. “You can tell the community Islam is a religion of peace until the cows come home and there will always be people who don’t want to hear you.”

All these shock waves, all this disappointment, all this unexpected truth-telling from someone whom “we [Muslims] truly believe is open-minded and who has backed us up in the past” certainly can shake things up. Perhaps M. Couillard has had it up to here with making excuses for Islam. At least he would like Muslim leaders “to explain to your people that this is not part of the religion, that it’s contrary to the teachings of the religion.” Whether that is true or false, many Infidels, and “moderate” Muslims alike will agree that it is best to act as if it were true, as if terrorism is “contrary” to “the teachings” of Islam, giving some Muslims a possible way out — call it a willful misunderstanding — of the most disturbing aspects of their own faith.

Ms. Ashraf herself reveals, in casual passing, that this “religion of peace” business offered for Infidel consumption is not accepted by Muslims — “we [the Muslim leaders] can say it is ‘until the cows come home”’ but “there will always be people” who “don’t want to hear you.” How many? One or two, or quite a few? We all know the answer to that. Perhaps the question ought to be a different one. Perhaps Shaheen Ashraf should ask this of those Muslims who listen to her: “Why should non-Muslims be expected to permanently welcome us, Muslims, into their lands, and endure our demands, and the generous benefits we lay claim to and receive, and our Stealth Jihad, and our terrorism, and the huge security expenses our presence requires, while we do not even try to find a way to remove the murderous sting from those many dangerous verses in the Qur’an? Yes, it’s up to us to interpret away the malevolent meaning of more than a hundred verses, through the only possible way, making true the very falsehoods we have been feeding the Infidels (as when we insist that ‘you have to realize this verse — 9:5, 9:29, 2:191-3, 47:4, 8:12 and so on — pertains to a specific context’), to explain away those Jihad verses. We will find a way to limit the application of these verses to a specific context, some 1400 years ago, when Muhammad was fighting against a series of local enemies whose identities we should be able to unearth.”

This will, of course, be opposed by many Muslims. But more than a few Muslim leaders surely realize that when even a man like Premier Couillard has declared it incumbent on Muslim leaders to explain that terrorism “is not part of the religion, that it’s contrary to the teachings of the religion,” then he has to be listened to, and his counsel followed by Muslim leaders. It will not do to have him reluctantly conclude, as he would otherwise have to, that terrorism is NOT contrary “to the teachings of the religion.”

How long will the increasingly implausible excuses of Muslim defenders continue to be accepted? Those Muslims who are repelled by terrorism, but who also recognize that it’s part of Islam, have to figure out how to “reform” Islam in a way that will leave enough of it intact to satisfy Believers, but that strips the Qur’an of its deepest malevolence. What “moderate” Muslims have to understand, and accept, is the need for that very “contextualization” that they always bring up to explain away the Jihad verses. This is the only kind of “reform” of Islamic texts that may be possible. Yes, those Muslim leaders should be asked to relate every Jihad verse, and especially those that invoke the need to “strike terror’’ in the hearts of the Infidels, to a specific time and place and enemy, in Arabia 1400 years ago. And then they must work to have Muslims accept as “the real Islam” that which we are perfectly aware is, for now, only the pretend-Islam that is fed to Infidels by defenders of the Faith when they engage in “contextualizing” away, as descriptive rather than prescriptive, so many violent verses in the Qur’an. Expressed otherwise, as Wallace Stevens put it, “let Be be finale of Seem.”

Members of Montreal’s Muslim community were at a loss to explain Mr. Couillard’s change in tone, particularly coming just before this weekend’s end to the holy month of fasting known as Ramadan.

Why were they “at a loss to explain Mr. Couillard’s change in tone”? Could the incessant news of attacks by Muslims on non-Muslims, even just in the last month or so in several dozen cities around the globe, have something to do with that change? Is there a point at which even Prime Minister Couillard might become tired of pretending that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam? At the moment he has gone beyond the stage of offering reassurances to Muslims, but still appears to believe (it’s hard to know what, at this point, he really believes) that Muslim leaders have a duty “to explain to your people that this is not part of the religion, that it’s contrary to the teachings of the religion.” The next stage, of course, would be for him to recognize — it will take some serious study — that in fact terrorism is part of Islam, and is not contrary, in either spirit or letter, to the religion. And if enough of the couillards of the Western world, former defenders of Islam, reach that conclusion, and publicly proclaim it, then Muslims will be on their uppers.

Community leaders said the Premier was a model of understanding and empathy after the January shooting at a Quebec City mosque that killed six people. Mr. Couillard, a former brain surgeon, worked in Saudi Arabia for several years and offered words of comfort in Arabic in the wake of the shooting.

If he “worked in Saudi Arabia for several years,” then along with his fat Saudi salary, he surely must have observed the misogyny toward women, felt the deep hostility toward all non-Muslims, had even seen the mutawwa or religious police enforcing the Sharia on the streets, and grasped the totalitarian nature of Islam, especially of the ferocious Wahhabi sort. He cannot allow himself to be fooled forever about Islam. Which is why, although for a while he went along with the party line pushed by Justin Trudeau and the Liberals, he finally abandoned the ship of appeasement. He’d had enough.

Ms. Ashraf, unsurprisingly, attributes his change of tone purely to political considerations: “When Mr. Couillard was supportive of Muslims it caused an uproar and now he’s trying to appease the public. He’s pandering.” As long as he held to a pro-Muslim line, he was fine. Once he began to sound a different note about Islam, though, according to Ms. Ashraf, that’s when he was “pandering.” Others might want to turn it around: before, M. Couillard pandered, just like Justin Trudeau, to Muslims, and now, mugged by the reality of so many Muslim terrorist attacks, he has stopped pandering, stopped pretending that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam.

Could the “contextualization” approach work? That is, could enough Muslims be persuaded to believe that the Qur’anic verses on Jihad are not meant to apply for all time but, rather, to specific campaigns and battles against specific enemies, in western Arabia, some 1400 years ago? It’s impossible to say. It is possible to hope that some Muslims, although they continue to offer lame and even ludicrous excuses for Muslim terrorists (poverty, lack of education, resentment over non-existent “colonialism,” etc.), and still insist, with straight faces, that terrorism “has nothing to do with Islam,” might welcome having such a “contextualizing” interpretation imposed, or at least promoted by, reform-minded imams and scholars, people such as the outspoken Imam Mohammad Tawhidi in Australia. By accepting this interpretation, and persuading others to follow suit, these Muslims would be participating in deliberately re-fashioning the faith by a sort of textual prestidigitation, so that it will be possible for Muslims not merely to pretend, but actually to be able, to coexist with others.

Qari Asim, an imam in the northeast city of Leeds, and one of several hundred Muslim clergy in the U.K. who signed a pledge not to conduct funeral services for Muslim terrorists, apparently agrees that the most feasible approach at this point would be to “contextualize” the Jihad verses, to put them into a “particular historical context’:

In Britain, Mr. Asim says, Muslim leaders are taking up those cudgels. “We used to ignore those verses” in the Koran that urge Muslims to kill non-Muslims – the ones that Islamic State preachers seize on – he says. “But we need to talk about them and explain to students that they are part of the Koran but that they do not apply today because they refer to a particular historical context that is not the same today.”

This language is astonishing, and most welcome, if only enough Muslims can be persuaded to believe what Qari Asim and his fellows are insisting must be believed. But could this ever come to pass, of treating the Qur’anic verses that call for killing non-Muslims as applying only to a particular context? Or is this merely a case of whistling in the dark by decent Muslims, without this view of the Qur’an having much chance of widespread adoption?

So far none of the signs are good. It seems an impossible task, this hoped-for “reform of Islam” of which even apostates such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali speak and write. “As long as there is this book [the Quran],” Gladstone is reported to have said, “there will be no peace in the world.” Very likely. But “contextualization” of the most dangerous verses — holding the apologists for Islam to their own assertions, when they defend the faith, that “those verses can only be understood in their specific context” (as Qari Asim insists, those verses “that urge Muslims to kill non-Muslims” are “part of the Qur’an …that do not apply today because they refer to a particular historical context”) — could be tried. It must be tried, before the world is engulfed in the madness of Islam that has spilled over its historic banks, thanks to the millions of migrants, and is already wreaking havoc in Europe.

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.